Using WPF for Good and Not Evil

I've just written a major post entitled Using WPF for Good and Not Evil. It examines the Family.Show sample application often used as an example of the great things that the power of WPF allows you to do. It is that, and it's also an example of the awful things that the power of WPF allows you to inflict on a user if you're not careful with it. As with a chain saw, power used with careful thought can accomplish great things, but without that careful thought hurts more than it helps. These developers use the exact same features to delight and also infuriate the user in the same application. Read the full article at this link.

What Do Microsoft.com and Tampax.com Have in Common?

They both inflict physical pain on their viewers through the deliberate choices of their designers. My take on these sites is too large to fit in a blog entry, so I've written in more detail on my newsletter at http://www.rollthunder.com/Newsletter/newslv10n2.htm . Looking at these sites caused my to coin Plattski's Law of Minimum Chiropractic. It states simply that forcing a user to visit a chiropractor will not make him happy, so you want to do that as little as possible. These sites violate it.